I often have a discussion about death. Not because it’s a necessarily great topic or that it is something I necessarily look forward to, but it is one of the inevitable things about life and it’s one of the few things that we can actually prepare for.
I know lots of people who don’t bother. Yesterday, I heard of a guy I knew who died of natural causes and was cremated. His friends don’t know what to do with him. He didn’t have any family that they know of. So he just continues to sit in his old house, as alone now in death as he was in his later years of life.
That is a sucky way to go out of this world. I’m not so worried about what happens at the big moment as the process for getting there. I even had my first real vivid death dream a couple nights ago. When the big moment hit, I didn’t buy it though. I simply continued on somewhere else.
This is, of course, why I have been loathe to donate any organs after my inevitable passing. I am worried that I might need them in the next place I go. I would hate to make the mistake of passing on my eyes, only to find that I have to play the role of a blind man in the next existence. Or worse, find that even though I passed on, I can still see the world here, but through the eyes of the guy who now has my eyes – and his life sucks!!!
The biggest problem I’ve had over the last 14 years – the thought of eventually dying really didn’t enter my head until I turned 40 – is what to do with me. Yes, the old bury me or burn me question.
Man, that’s been a tough one. I’m not really up for either option. First, I’m a bit claustrophobic, so being shoved into a small box and dropped into the ground doesn’t seem like a grand plan. Plus, they want me to pay $5,000+ for the privilege and I only found out over the weekend (funny what you talk about in a car) that the plot you “buy” is only good for something like 100 years, then it’s up for grabs again.
Even if it’s not, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard about families digging their loved ones up for some DNA or companies digging them up to make way for condos. So much for the concept of eternal rest.
Unfortunately, that whole fire thing doesn’t really jazz me either. Not crazy about fire, even though a part of me thinks that it might just be a warm up for my eternity in hell – you know, all that fire and brimstone stuff. If I could have a fire extinguisher next to me just in case, I’d give it a try.
Why? Well, again, I’ve seen those shows where someone’s not quite dead, but in the words of Mad Max in Princess Bride, just “mostly dead.” You know the stories – the claw marks on the top of the coffin. I figure if I had a fire extinguisher in the oven or a cell phone in my underground hotel, I would have it covered. Unless, of course, I couldn’t get cell coverage six feet under. Hell, half the time I can’t get a decent signal above ground. And what if my loved ones don’t feel like answering the phone if I call them after I buy it? Hhm, this requires more thought.
Even more so now that I’ve learned that even if I get my plot for more than a hundred years, I won’t get the eternal rest I desperately need. You see, we’re on a collision course and the end result won’t be pretty.
It seems that the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies have a thing for one another. They are moving towards each other at what astronomers consider a brisk pace, at least for space.
The end result is that the two galaxies will collide someday. When this happens, all hell will break loose and our puny planet, along with all the other stuff in the Milky Way will become, well, cosmic dust. Everything will reform into new heavenly bodies and my little corner of the world is going to be ripped apart at the seams by physics and I will be cheated out of what was advertised.
Yes, the concept of eternal rest just went out the window. Enter my desire to control my future, even if I’m a bit stiff in it. I just think about that day, four billion years in the future, when I’m awoke from my supposed eternal rest by a cataclysm outside. It will be like living next to my neighbor in Port Orchard. I will be in quiet, peaceful repose and suddenly be woken up by what sounds like the wailing of cats who were mating just as a garbage truck rolled over them. Or was it a Jimi Hendrix solo. Regardless, I will be pretty pissed by all the ruckus out there. “Why in the hell can’t I get my eternal rest?” I will think.
But now, the colliding galaxies won’t let me. Pretty soon, the ground will start shaking, it will open up, it will fall apart, and everything I paid for will suddenly be floating around in space.
And yes, that will really piss me off even more because I paid for this spot. And now that damned universe is getting freaky with another universe and I’m floating around in space somewhere in a box as a result.
On second thought, I have always wanted to go into space. Maybe this is my ticket. Sure, I could have some of me soar to the heavens aboard a rocket right now. But that’s only a vial of me (and no, no jokes about me being vial already). But with the apocalypse, all of me gets to go on a ride of a lifetime. Well, deadtime.
OK, so it’s the ground for me, waiting for liftoff. Let’s see… 4,000,000,000, 3,999,999,999.59… boy, this is going to be a really long countdown.
In the Emerald City, wondering what I should wear,
– Robb